Sharon Kay Penman's Blog, page 12

An elephant in need of human kindness and compassion

I know there are many, many animal lovers here, so I am posting this in hopes that those of you who agree with me will sign this petition. Happy is an elephant at the Bronx Zoo who has been kept in solitary confinement for more than a decade. For such an intelligent, social creature, this amounts to torture. The ironically named Happy does not deserve this and there is a movement to get her removed to an elephant sanctuary so she may spend her twilight years in relative freedom with her own kind. This link will take you to the petition and an article about Happy’s sad history. There is also an article from the New York Times, calling her “the world’s loneliest elephant.” That article calling attention to Happy’s plight was written in 2015! Is Happy going to be freed only by death?
http://chng.it/RLmYDYyf7m

A new novel by Margaret Skea

I know Margaret Skea has an enthusiastic following on Facebook, so I wanted to pass along some good news. Her newest novel, Katharina Fortitude is now out and, even better, the Amazon mother ship is offering the Kindle version at only 99 cents. It is also available on Amazon.UK for 99 pence. This is the sequel to Katharina Deliverance, about the life of a very interesting woman, Katharina Von Bora, wife of Martin Luther, who is often called the Father of the Protestant Reformation. Margaret is also the author of the acclaimed Munro Scottish saga, a trilogy set in late 16th century Scotland: Turn of the Tide, House Divided, and by Sword and Storm. Below is the Amazon link for her newest book.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07...

A great loss

I will be back this weekend to start catching up on my Today in Medieval History posts. But first I would like to thank all of you who answered my appeal and went to Amazon to request that Priscilla Royal’s medieval mystery, Wine of Violence, be made available in the Kindle format. Wine is the first novel in Priscilla’s excellent series, set in 13th century England, and for years, readers could buy it as an ebook, hardcover, paperback, or audio book on Amazon. Suddenly, that is no longer the case for the ebook. Since I’ve been told by other writers that Amazon is very slow in responding to author queries about glitches like this, I hoped to attract their attention by having readers click the Amazon option, “Tell the publisher you’d like to read this book as a Kindle.” That option used to be prominently displayed; now it is tucked away at the lower right-hand section of the screen and is easily missed, so I am grateful that so many of you persevered until you found it. I will let you all know when the good guys prevail and Amazon restores Wine of Violence as an ebook.

We lost a literary rock star this week and an extraordinary woman, the Nobel-Prize-winning author, Toni Morrison, at a time when we need voices like hers more than ever. I’ve never read a novel that lays bare the heartbreak and horror of slavery as powerfully and hauntingly as her Beloved does. Since her death, global tributes have continued to pour in. Here is one that I found particularly moving and eloquent, written by the film critic and author, Gene Seymour, and published on the CNN website. Below is the link. https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/06/opinio...

Help us correct an Amazon glitch

I hope to get back later to catch up and to mourn the passing of a literary giant, Toni Morrison. I am about to head off now to see my own miracle worker, my chiropractor. But first I wanted to ask a favor of you all. Many of you share my pleasure in reading Priscilla Royal’s excellent medieval mystery series. She was alerted recently that Amazon is no longer offering an ebook version of her first novel, Wine of Violence. She contacted Amazon about the problem, with no reply so far. Unfortunately, other writers have told me that Amazon is notoriously slow to respond to author queries about their books. And since Wine of Violence is the first in the mystery series, it is essential that it be available as an ebook. So here comes the favor. I am enclosing a link to the Amazon page that offers the option of expressing a wish to read this book as a Kindle. If Amazon gets enough of a response, that may stir them to action. So Priscilla and I would be grateful if you could follow this link to Amazon and then click onto the option requesting Wine in the Kindle format. It is on the right-hand side of the screen, under the Product Details on the left, and says Tell The Publisher. That is all you need to do….vote with one click! And if you want to share this post with other book=loving friends, that would be truly awesome.
https://www.amazon.com/Violence-Medie...

Why kings should not shoot their own artillary

So what happened on August 3rd? I am sure Rania will cover the spectrum for us (thanks, Rania!), so I’ll confine myself to one event. It does not concern a historical figure I’ve written about, but his demise was unusual enough to deserve a mention. On August 3, 1460, the thirty-year-old King of Scotland, James II, was killed when a cannon he was attempting to load exploded. I can think of several earlier kings who’d have been unable to resist the urge to fire a cannon, saved only because artillery guns were unknown during their reigns. It is definitely something the Lionheart would have wanted to try, and I can also see a young Edward I or a young Henry V giving it a go. But as far as I know, James has the dubious distinction of being the only monarch blown to Kingdom Come by a cannon. If I am wrong, I am sure at least one of my readers will know who else was so unlucky! I can think of a few kings whom I’d have liked to be blown to smithereens by a cannon, but that is another story, isn’t it?

Mirebeau, Jaffa, and Evesham

I hope it will be a good weekend for all of my readers. I am going to be busy doing some de-cluttering in preparation for more home renovations on Monday. But de-cluttering is oddly therapeutic and I think I’ll have fun. Life in the fast lane—no wonder people think writers lead such exciting, glamorous lives! Below is an old post for historical happenings on August 1st, with some changes or additions.

August 1st was a busy and bloody day in the MA. In 1192, Richard I fought and won the first battle of Jaffa, which I dramatized in Lionheart. It was a remarkable victory which did much to burnish the legend of the Lionheart. One military historian went so far as to describe it as the day that Richard rode into immortality! It seems to have been a lucky day for the Angevins, for ten years later, his brother John would have his one great military triumph on that same date.

On August 1st, 1202, John swooped down upon his nephew Arthur and the leading Breton barons as they lay siege to Eleanor in Mirebeau Castle. It was a brilliant accomplishment, which I dramatized in Here Be Dragons. Sadly, he tarnished his triumph and his reputation by treating the prisoners very badly, which stirred up much resentment against him. It is generally believed that he was responsible for Arthur’s murder the following year; it was certainly the view of his contemporaries and he never fully recovered from that.

But if August 1st was a good day for the Angevins, it was a disastrous day for the de Montforts. On this day in August, 1265, young Simon (renamed Bran in my novels to save me from ever having to write: Simon said to Simon) and his men were taking their ease at Kenilworth Castle, bathing in the lake and entertaining themselves with the prostitutes that inevitably flocked to a medieval army. His cousin Edward was warned of this by a female spy, and staged an unusual night march to take Bran by surprise. Edward then collected Bran’s banners and headed for Evesham. Simon was expecting Bran’s arrival and when he first saw the banners in the distance, he assumed it was his son. When he went up into the bell tower of Evesham’s abbey and realized that he was looking at his doom, he faced it unflinchingly, giving us one of history’s better exit lines: “We must commend our souls to God, for our bodies are theirs.” Meanwhile, back at Kenilworth, Bran collected what was left of his scattered army and raced for Evesham. He arrived too late; the battle was over. One chronicler would comment, “Such was the murder of Evesham, for battle it was none.” But Bran got there just in time to see his father’s head on a pike. Once again reality trumps fiction, for what writer would dare to make something like that up?

The king and the saint and the writer caught between them

I am happy to report that the Deadline Dragon and his accomplice, the Proofreader Dragon, are preparing to depart on the morrow, for I expect to be able to send off the finished queries tonight. It has been a very hectic week, for they are doing some long overdue house renovations and that means my world is in total chaos. But all the inconvenience will eventually be worth it; at least, that is what I keep telling myself. 😊 There have been some bright spots, though. I am evicting the large fire-breathing reptiles. Holly is getting extra play dates at the kennel to keep her from volunteering to help the contractors. I leased a new Toyota Camry and am so glad I listened to the friends who told me to check them out. And football season is less than six weeks away!

Since I missed so many historical events for July, I have plenty to choose from now that I am able to spend time again with you guys. (Guys being a noun without gender, applying equally to men and women, young and old; it may be a Jersey thing.) Today I decided to revisit an old post from 2012, for it focuses upon what may be my favorite scene in all my books—when a desperate and despairing King Henry II swallows his pride and humbles himself before the Canterbury tomb of his beloved friend turned mortal enemy, Thomas Becket. Did Henry ever believe that Becket was truly a saint? I have him ask Ranulf that question in Time and Chance. Ranulf admits that he does not know, and Henry concludes their discussion with a sardonic observation, that in gaining martyrdom, “Thomas got the last word for certes.”

Below is my original post about Henry’s penance in Canterbury Cathedral, as written in Devil’s Brood.
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Henry’s penance actually carried over from July 12th to the 13th, as he insisted upon kneeling all night long by Becket’s tomb. And he was to be spectacularly rewarded for his ordeal, for while he was doing penance, his forces captured the King of Scotland outside Alnwick Castle. Naturally, medievals attributed this to the intervention of the martyred archbishop, Thomas Becket. The Great Rebellion against Henry fell apart and within two months, his sons were suing for peace.

Some scenes are innately challenging, and the scene in the cathedral was certainly one of them. I approached it with some unease, for if it fell flat, I feared it could adversely affect the rest of Devil’s Brood. Henry’s decision to do penance was so very medieval, after all, and it is not always easy for us to identify with the medieval mind-set. To my surprise and relief, it turned out to be very easy to write. I was even able to insert a few touches of humor into this highly charged, dramatic scene: Driven to distraction by a garrulous monk, Henry wonders, “Was there a way to murder Brother Benedict and make it seem as if he’d been smitten by the wrath of the unforgiving Thomas? A vengeful saint was surely a contradiction in terms, but he alone seemed to think so.” Brother Benedict, by the way, would later pen a history of the miracles he was boring Henry with. I searched diligently for a copy, and finally found one on-line in a Tokyo bookstore; I admit I loved the symmetry of that—an American author buying a book written by a medieval monk and translated by a Victorian historian from a Japanese bookseller.

The trickiest part of the scene was Henry’s monologue after Brother Benedict finally departs. I wasn’t sure how I’d handle this, but Henry’s character chose to talk conversationally to his former friend, and I just followed his lead. He is by turns emotional, cynical, and challenging, calling Thomas a chameleon, denying that he wanted Becket’s death, and confiding “Did I grieve for you? No, I did not.” He accuses Thomas of craving martyrdom, points out the absurdity of Becket’s position that only the Church could punish its own, for it meant that he could take no action against the assassins, who escaped with a papal slap on the wrist, sent off on penitential pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Henry being Henry, he cannot resist sarcasm; “Come, Thomas, hold up your part of the conversation. You need not do anything dramatic, like loosing a thunderbolt or performing one of your miracles. But at the least, you could extinguish a few candles to show me you are paying attention.” He ends up confessing, though. “Do you know why I did not grieve for you when you died, Thomas? Because I’d already done my grieving. I trusted you, I had faith in you, I loved you more than my own brother.” He admits he does not understand how they came to this, and he truly does not, just as he will not understand why his marriage crumbles or his sons do not love him as he loved his own father. He waits in vain in the empty cathedral crypt for a response from the new saint, and finally entreats in desperation, “St Thomas, guard my realm.” I, for one, was very glad that St Thomas came through for him.

I have a confession of my own; I think this may be my favorite of all the scenes I’ve written, for it shows Henry at his most human. After three novels with him, I miss writing about him very much, and while I did manage to give him a brief scene in Ransom, that only made me mourn his loss all the more. I’ve been able to write about some memorable characters over the years, but Henry is very close to my heart.

Don't go down into the basement!

I am taking a brief Dragon break; I don’t smell smoke, so I assume they are taking their mid-afternoon naps. We still haven’t talked much here about the Game of Thrones finale, but I admit that if they’d killed off another dragon, I’d never have forgiven them. Same for Ghost. Sadly, human beings are more expendable—except for Tyrion, of course! Now, here is my historical post for today.
You know how in those horror films you want to scream out to the teenagers, “For God’s sake, do not go down into the basement!” Well, something happened on July 29th, 1565 that elicits the same response. On this date, Mary Stuart married Lord Darnley. I am not even a fan of Mary’s and yet I want so much to have stopped her! I always thought this disastrous marriage was the handiwork of the fiendishly clever Elizabeth; I really believe she deliberately sent the handsome but vacuous Darnley to Mary’s court after first insulting Mary by offering her Robert Dudley as a husband, knowing Mary would take the bait. Her plan succeeded beyond her wildest expectations, for less than two years later, Darnley had been murdered and Mary was in free fall, taking her first steps along the road that would eventually lead to Fotheringhay Castle.
On a more cheerful note, July 28, 1166 was the birthdate of one of my favorite characters in Lionheart, Richard’s nephew Henri, Count of Champagne. I loved writing about Henri in Lionheart and had hopes of doing more with his time in the Holy Land, but it has not worked out so far. Maybe I should consider writing a few short stories about certain dramatic events in a particular historical figure’s life. I’ve noticed that quite a few writers are doing that now, especially those who write a series that revolves around one character. Readers, what do you think? A good idea or a bad one?

"A great and terrible king"

A hot humid day in my corner of the world and I’m not in the best of moods, having expended most of my energy fending of the Deadline Dragon and his smaller partner in crime. I am taking a brief break to reach out to the real world and was browsing my archive of Facebook historical posts to find one of interest. I came upon a post written back in 2012 that was quite critical of Edward I and reading it cheered me up quite a bit; it is always satisfying to get to do mini-rants about historical figures I do not like! Actually, I liked writing about Edward very much, for he was larger-than-life, intelligent, courageous, and could be good company; I especially enjoyed his barbed bantering with Davydd ap Gruffydd in The Reckoning. But that is the novelist at play. The historian and humanitarian in me remain very critical of the suffering Edward caused the Jews, the Welsh, the Scots, just to name three of his favorite targets. So, I invite you all to join me in calling Longshanks to account for his sins, with the proviso that I very much doubt he’d have cared tuppence what we thought of him.
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We often are critical of Edward I here for sentencing Davydd ap Gruffydd to such a savage death, for imprisoning his two young sons, for turning the Welsh into second-class citizens in their own homeland, and for his abusive treatment of Robert the Bruce’s female relatives. But we ought not to forget what he did on July 18, 1290. The thirteenth century saw a steady erosion of the status and safety of medieval Jews, beginning with the Fourth Lateran Council when Pope Innocent III decreed that the Jews were to wear badges to differentiate them from Christians. The English kings reflected this growing hostility toward the Jews, Henry III and Edward I being much more anti-Semitic than Henry II and Louis VII of France. Edward did a practice run in 1287, expelling all of the Jews from Gascony, which enabled him to confiscate their goods and lay claim to the debts owed them. And on July 18, 1290, he issued the Edict of Expulsion, forcing all of England’s Jews to flee the country. Sadly, this edict was a popular one, for anti-Semitism was the ugly underside of medieval life. I’ve occasionally been asked about various historical figures I’ve written about, readers wanting to know if they were anti-Semitic. The answer would be yes, for this was a poison they all breathed in from birth, a bias sanctioned by the Church; the degree of that bias varied considerably, of course. We do not know the exact number of those affected by Edward’s expulsion; I’ve seen estimates ranging from 2,000 to 16, 000. They would not be welcome again in England for more than 350 years.

Dragons are back!

I am sorry to report that Penman Manor has been invaded by dragons again. One is relatively benign, a proof-reading dragon, but he was accompanied by the much more dangerous Deadline Dragon. The little guy is bringing another round of queries, mainly of a grammatical nature or for clarity, and the Deadline Dragon is here to be sure I get it all done by this coming Wednesday. Naturally they arrived just as some long-overdue house renovations and repairs are about to start. Dragons never have good timing.
I was rooting around in my archives to find a post for Facebook. I have lots of material since so many dates of historical significance went unmarked in July; I hope to catch up with some of the more spectacular medieval anniversaries in August. I came across one that first saw the light of day in 2014, so enough time has passed that most of you have forgotten it. 😊 I was just discussing Eleanor of Aquitaine during lunch with a friend yesterday; she is planning a trip to Fontevrault Abbey and we had a lot of fun talking about the incomparable Eleanor and my Eleanor Tour in 2011. So when I saw this old post about our favorite duchess, I couldn’t resist sharing it again. Here it is.
Nothing to post about July 21st medieval happenings, but I do have a lovely story about Eleanor of Aquitaine told to me by one of my readers. She said that she’d visited Fontevrault Abbey about fifteen years ago and at the foot of her tomb was one red rose. She asked the guide, “Do you put them there?” He said, “Oh, no, Madame, we find them there.” I think Eleanor would be pleased and I suspect she might just mention to Henry that no one put flowers by his tomb.
Some years ago, I visited the abbey ruins of Cwm Hir, where Llywelyn ap Gruffydd is said to have been secretly buried by the Welsh to keep the English king from desecrating his grave as he’d done with Simon de Montfort’s grave at Evesham Abbey. It was rather remote and not easy to find. There is a black slate plaque there in his memory, which I always found far more moving than the large monument to him at Builth Wells. On my first visit to Cwm Hir, I was touched to see that someone had been there very recently and left a bouquet of flowers on the memorial stone. Welsh friends have told me that flowers are often found on Joanna’s tomb in the alcove of St Mary’s Church in Beaumaris, too.